Despite opting out of nearly every catalog I could think of1, we still receive mounds and mounds of paper trash from various retailers. Garbage cans full every week, most of which gets2 recycled, at least in our household. A shame, because so much energy is wasted attempting to stimulate sales of crap we don’t even need or want.
Jeffrey Ball writes:
[The paper and catalog industry] is the third-largest energy user within the U.S. manufacturing sector, trailing the energy and chemicals industries, according to the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration. Making paper accounted for 2.4% of U.S. energy use in 2006, the most recent year for which statistics are available.
Little data exist on how much energy is used specifically to make catalogs. A 1999 report by the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group that sought to highlight catalogs’ impact, said they consumed more energy in one year than one million homes.
[Click to continue reading Marketers Still Prefer a Paper Trail – WSJ.com]
The damn things are not even very effective at stimulating sales:
only 1.3% of those catalogs generated a sale, the survey found. The average U.S. catalog retailer reported mailing about 21 million catalogs in 2007, sending out a new edition every 26 days
and for no good reason, the catalog paper is not even recycled paper, by and large, meaning virgin lumber is sacrificed for 98.7% of the virgin lumber to end up in a trash can, unopened, unread, unwanted.
The paper typically used in catalogs contains about 10% recycled content, according to industry consultant RISI. That is far less than paper in general, which typically contains about 30% recycled content. For newspapers, a bigger paper user than catalogs, the amount of recycled content is roughly 40%.
Pretty sad statistics.
Catalog Choice wants to update the mindset of catalog retailers, but the industry is reluctant to change long-established practices:
Chuck Teller, executive director of Catalog Choice, is working on an idea that could wean catalog retailers away from paper-based marketing without hurting their businesses. His “iCatalog” aims to adapt the accessibility of a paper catalog to the digital realm. Using an online widget that consumers can install on a personal Web page or social-networking site, Catalog Choice continually updates and customizes retailers’ product selections.
Still, so far there are widgets available for only a few dozen titles. The National Directory of Catalogs, meanwhile, lists 12,524 catalogs, the vast majority of which include a paper version. That directory runs to 1,266 pages.
- using Catalog Choice, as blogged about here [↩]
- allegedly [↩]
Seth: Nice summary. I prefer your title. I think Jeff wrote a good article. And thanks for using our service.
Chuck